


A basic formula

by acataleptic



Category: Homestuck
Genre: I have No Excuse, M/M, and then proceeds to make an idiot of himself, dirkjake - Freeform, in which jake knocks dirk down a flight of stairs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-09
Updated: 2014-11-09
Packaged: 2018-02-24 16:05:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2587535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acataleptic/pseuds/acataleptic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You should really slow down, take in the sights from time to time. Maybe if you had, you wouldn't have slammed right into that boy on his way down the staircase.<br/>What an introduction, paramount job, English.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A basic formula

Your name is Jake English and good lord are you in a pickle. 

“Oh God I am so sorry! Jeez Louise, are you alright!?”

The, admittedly very cute, boy waves his hand dismissively at you, “I’m fine.”

You squat to gather up his books that have scattered all around the bottom of the stairwell.

“I am so, so sorry.”

He grunts in a manner you can only assume is amused, “Yeah, you said that already.” You almost swoon, his voice is thick and you can just make out a low-lying Southern drawl.

He goes to pick himself up off the ground, but before he can, you zealously offer him your hand in support, effectively dropping all his doodads back onto the ground in the process.

“Oh fuck, I’m s-“

“Sorry?”

You can feel your face turning beet red out of mortification. You are making an utter fool of yourself in front of possibly the most attractive man you have ever laid your peepers on.

He taps your arm away from his books, “It’s fine, I can get it myself.”

“No!” You glance at him sideways, “I mean, it’s the least I can do after causing such a bloody mess,” His loose-leaf folder slips out of your hands and you scrabble to pick it back up, “Oh for Pete’s sake.”

He stares at you incredulously with a raised eyebrow. You swallow hard. His eyes are beautiful.

You shuffle his schooling paraphernalia into one arm and hold out your hand in an attempt to quell the rising awkwardness, “I’m Jake, by the way.” 

He takes it, even if with some scepticism, “Dirk.”

You help him to his feet, although he certainly could manage it himself. With a frame like that, so tall and muscular. Oh Lordy, you can’t take your eyes off him. He is so pretty. 

He- Dirk, you remind yourself, clears his throat and you realise that you’re still holding his hand. You laugh nervously and recoil somewhat violently.

“Ah!” You bend back down and pick up a pair of strange triangular sunglasses, “Are these yours?”

He takes them from you and dons them hastily. Such a shame, to cover such beautiful orange eyes. You grin though; what they fail to cover are the freckles dusted over his cheeks.

“Um,” He holds his shirt at the soggy patch from where his coffee must have spilled all over him, “This has been a fantastically weird experience, and thanks, for, whatever it is you did, but I-“

“Oh God look, your shirt is absolutely soaked! Jesus H Christ, I am such a fucking nincompoop.”

He snorts, “Has anybody ever told you that you speak like a fuckin’ dork?”

You laugh nervously and offer him his books, but he shakes his head, “If you’re still in a state of perpetual sorriness, you can carry my shit to my car for me.”

You nod enthusiastically, “Of course!”

He smirks at your excitement and your heart skips a beat, “Sweet.”

You trail along behind him as he leads you down the corridor and towards the building’s car-park exit.

“So, what was so important that you valued speed over avoiding pushing me down a flight of stairs?”

“Uh,” You try and keep yourself together, “Nothing, really.”

He mumbles something you don’t quite catch.

“Pardon?”

Shaking his head, he responds with, “Nevermind.”

“Alrighty, well, are you a student at the university?”

“No.”

“Oh,” You take a peek at his books, “What are all these then?”

“Homework. I tutor.”

You flip open the book on the top of the pile, It’s filled with strange numbers and equations and coding that you have never seen before in your entire life.

“Its gibberish.”

He turns to you with a faint smile, “Its robotics.”

So he’s sexy, Southern, and smart. You want to die, how is this even allowed?

“What about you, Jake?” 

You don’t even hear his question. You only hear the way he says your name. The way his lips wrap around the sound, and the drawled ‘a’ in the middle of it. How can he say it as though it’s the most casual thing in existence? As though your stomach isn’t performing acrobatic stunts, and your legs aren’t threatening failure, and your blood isn’t rushing away from your brain to a lower, less convenient place.

“Jake?” He looks back over his shoulder again. You try to swallow the lump in your throat, but almost choke on it instead.

“Hey, are you listening?”

If only he knew.

“Huh, oh yeah, sorry,” You pick up your pace to make up the distance you fell behind, “I don’t attend. This place, I mean. I don’t school- well, university. I don’t to university. Go. I don’t.”

“You don’t go to university.”

“Yes. I mean no.” Fuck, you absolute moron. 

He laughs quietly and holds open the glass door that bleeds the corridor into the car-park, “Flustered, are we?” He gestures for you to go first.

“No!” You shout a little louder than intended, it echoes around the hallway. You shuffle quickly through the door to escape your reverberating protest.

“So what are you doing here?” He follows you in, but quickly overtakes you. He moves horribly fast.

Say something clever say something clever, “Oh, y’know, chauffeuring relatives, knocking cute boys down staircases, just having an all-round whoopee.”

He barks a laugh and you realise what you just said.

“No, wait! I didn’t mea -“

He presses a button on his keys and the lights on car in front of him blink, “Nope, sorry man, you don’t get to take it back.”

You close your eyes and roll your head back in an exhausted groan, “Sorry, once I’ve run the course of my usefulness, I’ll skedaddle and you’ll never have to hang out with me again.”

He presses another button on his keys and the back of his car makes an unlocking sound, “That’s a shame.”

A high-pitched, “Huh?!” escapes you.

“I said,” He opens the boot effortlessly, and you can see the corded muscles of his arms rippling under his skin, “That’s a shame. As in, it would be unfortunate to never see you again.”

You drop all of his books to the ground. Loose sheets of paper flutter away from the initial pileup, and some of them come to rest beneath both Dirk’s car and the cars surrounding you.

He snorts, “I’m starting to think that you have a problem, bro.”

“I,” You stutter, “I-I’m sorry.”

He bends down to pick up the nearest paper, “Apologies seem to be your specialty.”

“Ha,” You kneel down to scoop up the books that didn’t bolt away to fuck knows where, “Yeah.” 

Your heart is slamming against your ribcage. Is he, interested in you? You stare blankly at the textbook in your hands titled simply Robotics 101, only, the ‘o’ in Robotics been scribbled out and replaced with an ‘ut’, so that it reads Robuttics 101. 

You almost laugh. He’s a man after your own heart, quite possibly literally. 

“Jake,” You barely contain a surprised screech as he appears in front of you, “Are you alright?”

“Uh,” You offer him Robuttics 101 and he takes it from you, “Certainly, I’m just,” Come on English, what have you got to lose? “Not accustomed to this flirting business.”

Dirk grins, “Oh yeah?” He holds out a hand and, this time, he helps you to your feet, “Well it’s a very basic formula, really.”

You return his grin, “I’m not very good at maths, maybe you could tutor me?”

“There you go, hot damn, you’re a natural.”

Together you collect the rest of his books up off the chilly concrete floor. You get a nice gander at his hindquarters as he reaches under his car for the last few pages. You’re quite sure he intended you to do so, because good lord he is working it.

As he hands you the loose sheets, you sneak a quick peek at something that isn’t his ass.

Although you are not a very mathematically minded man, and certainly haven’t the faintest as to what any of these scribbles mean, the large red crosses through equations, and occasional ‘are you fucking serious?’ written in margins, are enough to assure you that he damn well knows what he’s talking about. 

You laugh when he hands you the paper with a giant red ink ‘no’ scrawled over the entirety of the page.

“What are these?”

“Progress tests,” He shuffles his way back out from under the car, “Although the amount of progress being made is debatable.” You turn the ‘no’ sheet around for him to see and he smirks, “Vriska Serket thinks that she’s talented.”

“Rather harsh,” You place them in the trunk with the rest of his stuff, next to the katana. Which you don’t think is weird thing to have in your car. At all.

“There is no one who would not rather appear to know than be taught.”

He may have been quoting someone profound, but you don’t want to seem even stupider by asking, so you just nod as though you understand, “True.”

Judging by the shadow of a grin that plays across his lips, he can tell that you’re full of shit. 

You clear your throat, “Okie doke, well, I think we got them all.”

He stands and brushes down his, well fitted, white shirt, now filthy with both axle grease and dried coffee stain.

“Well fuck.”

“Oh Jesus, I’m so sorry.”

Although you can’t see them, you’re pretty sure he rolls his eyes at you, “Its fine man, I think I have a spare in the car.”

With that, he pulls off his shirt and it’s all you can do not to scream. You’re gawking, you know, you don’t even try to hide it. His chest is just as pale as the rest of him, defined and muscular. Embarrassingly enough, you feel the warmness return to your lower parts.

At a closer glance, his ivory skin is littered with scars, some deep and corded, others small nicks. 

“W-what happened to you?” You ask before you can stop yourself.

He rummages through one of the bags in the trunk, “Carelessness.”

An especially deep scar runs the length of his left shoulder to his right hip, disappearing into his jeans. You try and resist the urge to touch it, but fail. 

Dirk recoils, “What the fuck are you doing?”

“I,” You clutch you hand to your chest, “I’m sorry, I just…”

He may have been able to hide it under his shirt, but without it you see his chest tighten, “Stop apologising, it’s fine. I just didn’t expect it is all,” He returns to searching for clothing. 

“Dirk,” You feel brave, “Who did this to you?”

He scoffs, “My brother, but you should see him, this is nothing.” He takes out a black singlet and pulls it over his head, effectively drawing curtains on the show.

“That’s not very brotherly.”

He laughs dryly, “I s’pose not.”

You shake your head, trying to distance yourself from the memory of his naked torso- but knowing you’ll remember it later tonight.

“I can wash that, for you. If you want.” You gesture to his grubby shirt, flung onto the ground.

“Is that just an excuse to see me again?” He grins wickedly.

“No! I just feel bad, is all. I am TRYING to be a decent person here.”

“Sure, whatever you say.”

“It’s true!”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t.” He picks up the shirt and throws it into the backseat of his car, “To be honest though, I would much rather you just buy me a replacement coffee.”

You close the boot with a dull thud, “Sure! I mean,” You swallow, trying to keep your cool, “Okay, yeah. This time I’ll try and avoid spilling it all over you.”

“Ooh, very nice. I don’t think you even require my tutoring services.” He locks his car and leads you back towards the building’s interior.

Barely able to contain your anticipation, you quicken your pace to match his, “Well, it is a very basic formula.”

**Author's Note:**

> I warned you about the stairs bro


End file.
